


New Player Joined - ARK: Survival Evolved

by Gecko614, StarFusion617



Category: ARK: Survival Evolved
Genre: Adventures, Beaches, Bows, Brontos, Danger, Eggs, Fish, Forests, Implants, Monkeys, Mountains, Raptors, Rivers, Saddles, Shelter, Spears, Survival, Survivors, Travel, Trikes, ark dinosaurs, baby dinos, befriending dinos, caring for dinos, carnos, dilos, dimorphodons - Freeform, dino death, discovering ark dinos, feeding dinos, fighting with dinos, hatching eggs, holograms, in-game reality, knocking dinos out, no real relationships, parasaurs, pteranadons, riding dinos, sarcos, spinos, stegos, taming dinos, tranq arrows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-23 14:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18551368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gecko614/pseuds/Gecko614, https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarFusion617/pseuds/StarFusion617
Summary: ARK's newest player wakes up alone in the middle of a world she doesn't understand. When a dilophosaurus attacks her, she realizes that this new reality of dinosaurs and ancient creatures is very, very real, and very, very dangerous.She befriends another survivor soon after waking up and decides to work together, but can they survive this harrowing new world full of teeth and claws at every turn?





	1. The Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> So this happened after I was playing ARK with my friend. We tweaked it a little to make it fit the story and decided just to roll with it, so here is the first chapter! (Even if it's short.)

I slowly opened my eyes to an unfamiliar sky. My head throbbed as I brushed sand off my cheek. Blinking, I stood up and noticed a large stone-like implant in my forearm. I tried to pull it out, but it was buried so deep into my flesh that it seemed to be connected with my bone. Thin cracks that glowed like lightning bolts led outwards from a dark gemstone engraved in the middle. I reached a hand towards an ache in my head and felt short prickly hairs growing through my fingers. I looked down to realize that I was only wearing thin undergarments.

Confused, I glanced up and looked around. A wide river stretched across two thin beaches to my right, and a bright green forest disappeared into the distance to my left. There was a gentle slope to the land, grasses and ferns blending with sand and glistening water. The sun glared down harshly from above, turning the pale blue river water to liquid silver. This place, wherever it was, looked serene and calm.

I glanced behind me to see large, plump bird waddling towards me, oblivious to my presence. It made little clucking noises like a chicken, but its neck resembled that of a vulture. I tried to examine in closer, but it started to run. Before I could look behind it to see the cause, a fairly small, spiked creature with sleek scales and razor-sharp teeth fastened its jaws around the bird’s neck. It devoured its prey completely in a few ravenous mouthfuls.

The creature then turned to me. I started to run, but it was faster. Sharp claws sliced into my shoulders, and I turned to face the thing, throwing an arm up to block its snapping jaws. Suddenly the creature halted as a large fan-like structure flared around its neck. It reminded me little of the hood of a cobra. Dark green venom spurted from its mouth and sprayed onto my face and arm. I opened my tightly shut eyes and felt them burn as the venom blurred my vision, giving the world a light green haze. The beast lunged and fastened its teeth into my forearm. I kicked it away, adrenaline lending me strength, and it fell to the ground. I quickly stomped the heel of my bare foot into its neck and felt a snap beneath my foot. Thick red blood oozed out of its neck, green, oily poison making it reflect rainbow under the scorching heat of the sun.

I felt a tingling sensation beneath the skin on my uninjured arm and glanced down to see the implant glowing in my slowly clearing vision. A robotic voice played in my mind: “Dilophosaurus, level 2, status: dead.”

A hologram projection flickered into life from the implant, displaying a small, rectangular screen with the information I had just heard. Underneath the last line of text was a timer, slowly counting down from 5:00. It read, “Decomposes in: 4:58.”

I took a moment to think about what had just happened. I woke up in a strange world with rivers and trees and sandy beaches, and then I got attacked by a dilophosaurus. A _dinosaur._ Just where exactly _am_ I?


	2. Chapter 2: The Beginning

As the days went by, I managed to start collecting berries from the nearby bushes to keep me fed. They lacked the fat and protein I needed to keep a balanced diet, but I had bigger things to worry about now.

I figured out that what my implant’s robotic voice referred to as “narcoberries” were poisonous and made living creatures faint, but there must have been some use for them.

By now I had made a collection of stones and twigs that could be of use to me. Some of the stone could be shaped against other rocks to make the head of a crude pickaxe, and the wooden sticks could be bound to it with some fiber I collected from nearby bushes to make a handle. I did the same with sharper stones to make a hatchet.

The implant told me various pieces of information as I discovered different items, such as a few types of berries and some other materials. Once I was breaking a rock apart to collect more stone and found a glinting chunk of metal inside. It was heavy, and I didn’t know what I could use it for, but I kept it just in case.

Everything I gathered could be stored inside the implant. It seems like it wouldn't work, but I learned long ago that this world isn’t like a normal one. I only had to hold the item up to the implant, and it would disappear. If I wanted it back later, I could think about what I wanted while looking at the implant, and the gemstone would start glowing. It would project a hologram, and in neat rows of squares and rectangles were my items. I could take out any one I wanted by just thinking about it appearing in my hands.

The implant also told me that I could learn how to make different items, like blueprints, after I’d gained enough experience doing various things like gathering berries or mining rocks. The hologram that came up showed lists of slowly more complex objects I could make. They were organized in rows next to numbers marking the amount of experience I had gained.

As the days passed, I noticed more of the rows unlocking themselves and allowing me to view the blueprints for how to make the items. One of the hardest things I could make was a “parasaur saddle”. It was crafted using hide, wood, and fiber, and I decided to explore my surroundings a little more to find out what dinosaur it was used on.  
I used the wood and fiber from plants I had gathered and figured that hide would come from animals. I quickly targeted a dodo bird, as I had found out they were called, and tried not to think about what I was doing as I swung my hatchet at its neck. The bird was weirdly hardy, though, and the hatchet didn’t cut through its skin like I thought it would. Instead, it made a bloody dent in the bird’s shoulder, and I had to hit the thing again and again until it finally collapsed. The implant voice quoted, “Dodo, level 3, status: dead,” just like it had done with the dilo I had previously killed.

I quickly skinned the bird of its hide and killed a couple more the same way, gathering their hides and meat as I went. When I had enough, I pulled up the hologram and made the saddle, sewing together the fiber and hide and adding structure with the wood. When it was finished, I scrolled through my list of craftable items, called “engrams,” and found nothing else of interest.

I stored the saddle in the implant and ran along the beach, trying to find the dinosaur that matched the name on the saddle. It wasn’t hard, and once I found one, they seemed to be everywhere. I hefted my hatchet and swung it at the tall dinosaur’s hip, creating the same bloody mark as I did on the dodos. Though, instead of waddling aimlessly away, this creature threw its head back and let out a terrified screech that sounded more like a bellow and took off running. The crest on its head gave its voice dynamic as it ran, and it ended up being much faster than I was to follow it. Confused, I tried going up to another one and using the saddle on it, but the hologram wouldn’t allow me to remove the saddle. I turned around slowly in a circle, watching the nimble creatures eat various plants, trying to figure out a way to keep them in one place.

By the day’s end, I had tried many different methods, none of which worked. I tried driving the parasaurs into rocks, into trees, and into fallen logs, but they simply turned and ran the other way, uncaring of where I was standing. I tried running after them, catching them in the water, jumping on their backs from high rocks, and punching their legs to cripple them, but none of it did anything to slow the creatures down. Finally, I had no choice but to return to my temporary shelter, a little divot in the land near where I first woke up, and try again in the morning when I could see by more than torchlight.

As I walked, I didn’t hear the quiet hiss from behind me, or the wet noise as venom sprayed through the air. I did feel it hit my back, and turned to meet the same dinosaur I had barely killed last time. This time, there were three. Terrified, I started punching at them, too frantic to pull out my axe. I hit everything that moved, and random spots in front of me once my vision turned green from the venom. The dilos sliced my arms and back with their front claws and grazed my torso with wild jaws, but I barely felt any of it. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of hazy, unclear fighting and noises of pain from both me and the dinosaurs, the air cleared of sounds, I could see again, and I stopped feeling claws slash at my bare arms every few seconds.

I looked up to see all three dilos splayed out unconscious around me, heads rolled back and eyes half-lidded. They mumbled and snapped at invisible food in their half-awake states of mind. Curious, I inched closer, letting the implant do the talking.  
“Dilophosaurus, level 4, status: unconscious.” That was normal, except for the status. Underneath it was another line of text.  
“Feed taming food to tame.” There were two colored progress bars, one purple and one beige, in between the two sentences. The purple one was labeled, “unconscious” and was slowly decreasing. Underneath it was the yellowish bar, completely empty. Curious, I opened the dilo’s inventory the same way I opened mine. Inside was a creature implant, just like in mine, and nothing else. I carefully switched the dodo meat over to the dilo’s inventory, smiling when the yellow taming bar started filling up. As it did, a percentage appeared on the hologram, steadily increasing with the bar’s progress.

It only took a few minutes for the taming bar to fill all the way up. The purple bar never completely emptied, for which I was grateful. When the taming bar finished, the dilo stood up with a shake of its scaly head and squawked at me. The words, “Congratulations, you have tamed a dilo,” projected in my face from the implant. I looked to the other dilos and fed them the same way, watching as they both stood up and shook themselves out. Soon all three dilos were standing in a line in front of me, beady eyes watching me from their sculptured faces.  
When I hesitantly moved to go back towards my little shelter, the dilos immediately followed after, jogging behind me and jostling each other for positions. I ran back to my shelter with the dilos trailing me and watched as they ambushed another dilo that attacked us on the way back. I had my own little army, I thought to myself, smiling slightly. That night, I felt the safest I had since I woke up here.


End file.
